Trojan Poetry 54: "Dawn of Man" by Max Ritvo, Tom Petty, and Matisse

Trojan Poetry is created by John Waite and Mike Melie. Follow us on Twitter @trojanpoetrydgn and check out our website trojanpoetrydgn.blogspot.com

Mat Ritvo reading the poem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzhkVlbZCxY

Max Ritvo interview: https://www.divedapper.com/interview/max-ritvo/

Max Ritvo Interview: http://lithub.com/death-is-actually-very-funny-a-last-conversation-with-max-ritvo/

Dawn of Man
by Max Ritvo

After the cocoon I was in a human body
instead of a butterfly’s. All along my back

there was great pain — I groped to my feet
where I felt wings behind me, trying

to tilt me back. They succeeded in doing so
after a day of exertion. I called that time,

overwhelmed with the ghosts of my wings, sleep.
My thoughts remained those of a caterpillar — 

I took pleasure in climbing trees. I snuck food
into all my pains. My mouth produced language

which I attempted to spin over myself
and rip through happier and healthier.

I’d do this every few minutes. I’d think to myself
What made me such a failure?

It’s all a little touchingly pathetic. To live like this,
a grown creature telling ghost stories,

staring at pictures, paralyzed for hours.
And even over dinner or in bed — 

still hearing the stories, seeing the pictures — 
an undertow sucking me back into myself.

I’m told to set myself goals. But my mind
doesn’t work that way. I, instead, have wishes

for myself. Wishes aren’t afraid
to take on their own color and life — 

like a boy who takes a razor from a high cabinet
puffs out his cheeks and strips them bloody.

Trojan Poetry 53: "Frog-Hopping Gravestones" by Chen Chen

Useful Links:

Chen Chen Interview:https://youtu.be/zcEpHI-Wsag

Chen Chen reading: https://youtu.be/Z12amGb1lLw

Trojan Poetry is created by John Waite and Mike Melie, teachers at North High School in Downers Grove. Follow us on twitter @TrojanPoetrydgn.

Frog-Hopping Gravestones
 After Bert Hardy
The schoolboys in the cemetery look happily busy, playing what looks like the last
game of tag on earth—one in which the rules are reversed & almost all of them
get to be It. The photographer has caught them rushing between the gravestones,
a swarm of prim haircuts, tailored pants, & recently polished shoes now getting
sullied. This uniformed, many-armed It chases while one lone boy has scurried up
a tree, his arms & knees hugging tight the bark, the darkest part of the picture.

Or maybe this is the wrong song, the tree-climbing & graveyard-running unrelated,
the schoolboys forming separate scenes. For what to make of the boy, a bit older
perhaps, who’s just standing, staring at a gravestone? Does he recognize the name?
For what to make of the boy frog-hopping a gravestone? He’s the sole hopper, & yet
it’s his action that gives the photograph its name, gives this playground at the end
of the world its loudest life: one boy pushing off the top of a gravestone with both
hands, one boy’s legs kicking out, one boy flying, flinging himself in an impossible
direction, a future outside the photograph--

Trojan Poetry 52: "West of Schenectady" by Chen Chen

Useful Links:

Hear Chen Chen read the poem at this site: http://foggedclarity.com/article/west-of-schenectady/

Chen Chen Interview:https://youtu.be/zcEpHI-Wsag

Chen Chen reading: https://youtu.be/Z12amGb1lLw

Trojan Poetry is created by John Waite and Mike Melie, teachers at North High School in Downers Grove. Follow us on twitter @TrojanPoetrydgn.

West of Schenectady
By Chen Chen

The sun sets like a whispered regret behind the hills or is that a mountain.
Moths come to the screen door as if that was what they were made for.
Moth for screen door. & vice versa.
I don’t have time for their secrets tonight.
I am making my loneliness small. So small it fits on a postcard
a baby rabbit could eat.
The sun sets like an expensive fragrance. Like the memory of a neck.
The coyotes come but don’t they know I’ve named that rabbit, stay away.
Stay far.
The sun sets like a new regret like a flute I am learning to play
& I’m bad at it. Progress is slow.
It’s like saying tapioca pudding into the phone.
& the phone doesn’t work, I just want its weight pressed against my ear
until my ear is sticky.
I’m in the mood for facts.
Big globs of them. Big adult rabbits of science.
There’s a town in Upstate New York called Esperance where the gravity
works fine.
Esperance, NY as if “hope” in French is a higher quality hope.
Made of jewels & brie.
The sun sets like a science special I hated once.

Trojan Poetry 51: "Spell to Find Family" by Chen Chen

Useful Links:
Chen Chen Interview:https://youtu.be/zcEpHI-Wsag

Chen Chen reading: https://youtu.be/Z12amGb1lLw

Trojan Poetry is created by John Waite and Mike Melie, teachers at North High School in Downers Grove. Follow us on twitter @TrojanPoetrydgn.

Spell to Find Family
for Kundiman
I thirst for the starlight
that opens elephant skin.
I thirst for the raven
conjugated into riven
by summer storm.
My job is to trick adults
into knowing they have
hearts. My heart whose
irregular plural form is
Hermes. My Hermes
whose mouths are wings
& thieves, begging
the moon for a flood
of wolves, the reddest
honey. My job is to trick
myself into believing
there are new ways
to find impossible honey.
For I do not know all the faces
of my family, on this earth.
Perhaps it will take a lifetime
(or five) to discover every
sister, brother. Heartbeat
elephantine, serpentine,
opposite of saturnine.
I drive in the downpour,
the road conjugated
into uproar, by hearts
I do not know.
By the guttural & gargantuan
highway lion. The 18
-wheeler
whose shawl of mist is a mane
of newborn grandmothers.

Trojan Poetry 50: "Starchild" by Thomas Sayers Ellis

Starchild
by Thomas Sayers Ellis

for Garry Shider

Newborn, diaper-clad, same as a child,
That’s how you’ll leave this world.
No you won’t die, just blast off.

Legs for rockets, bones separating like boosters.
Guitar: a lover, slanted in a hug, plucked,
Scratched, strummed. You will raise

One finger, on the one, for the one,
Then lift like a chorus of neck veins,
All six strings offering redemption.

The black hole at the center
Of the naked universe will respond
With a flash of light: comets, whistles,

Glowing noisemakers, bang, bang.
Roofs everywhere cracking, tearing,
Breaking like water.

Trojan Poetry 49: "Back Yard" by Carl Sandburg

Back Yard
by Carl Sandburg

Shine on, O moon of summer. 
Shine to the leaves of grass, catalpa and oak, 
All silver under your rain to-night. 
 
An Italian boy is sending songs to you to-night from an accordion. 
A Polish boy is out with his best girl; they marry next month;
     to-night they are throwing you kisses.
 
An old man next door is dreaming over a sheen that sits in a
     cherry tree in his back yard. 
 
The clocks say I must go—I stay here sitting on the back porch drinking
     white thoughts you rain down. 
 
     Shine on, O moon, 
Shake out more and more silver changes.

Trojan Poetry 48: "Wind, Water, Stone" by Octavio Paz

Wind, Water, Stone
By Octavio Paz

Translated by Eliot Weinberger

for Roger Caillois

Water hollows stone,
wind scatters water,
stone stops the wind.
Water, wind, stone.

Wind carves stone,
stone's a cup of water,
water escapes and is wind.
Stone, wind, water.

Wind sings in its whirling,
water murmurs going by,
unmoving stone keeps still.
Wind, water, stone.

Each is another and no other:
crossing and vanishing
through their empty names:
water, stone, wind.